Sticky Sugar Kisses
by on rooftops
Summary: She was Lily, so of course it meant something. It meant everything. — Lily/Teddy


**Disclaimer:** Pas le mien.

Lily liked lollipops. Her family learned to contend with it early on – if she was happy, they'd end up with a sticky hand pressed into theirs, a sugary kiss smacked against their cheeks. If she wasn't…well, James and Al had found sticky bits of candy stuck in their hair, their sheets, their clothes and, occasionally, in the tails of their brooms.

Teddy had been the recipient of far too many sugar coated kisses to mind anymore – in fact, by the time he was seventeen he found them perfectly endearing. He Flooed into the Potter home a few weeks after his graduation from Hogwarts and lifted his god-sister from the floor, swinging her in a circle before she wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, popping her lollipop from her mouth and kissing him on his stubbly cheek.

"Guess what?"

"What?" Teddy carried her through the living room and into the kitchen, expecting to find Harry fucking up something on the stove or Ginny searching through the freezer for some sort of quick meal. But the small room was empty.

"We've got," she had stuck her lollipop – which smelled like a revolting green apple flavor – back in her mouth and spoke around it, "a su-prise for you."

"Oh?" Teddy walked to the back door and shoved one hip against it, swinging the screen open and peeking out into the rambling garden. No one there, either.

"Cause you're all old and done with school."

"Am I?" Teddy teased, "Thought I still had ages to go – decades, maybe."

"Silly!" Lily pressed her small hand against his cheek, forcing him to meet her eyes, "Of course you are. Dad says," she paused to wipe her hand against her chin, "that you've gotten some big job somewhere. So you _can't_ still be in school."

"Teddy!" Ginny appeared in the doorway, a cheerful smile on her lips, "I didn't hear you come in."

Teddy crossed the kitchen and wrapped his free arm around Ginny, dropping a kiss on her hair, "How are you?"

She smiled up at him, "Wonderful. We meant to have your congratulatory dinner before giving you your congratulatory gift, but Harry just got too excited about it all. You know how he is."

Teddy grinned, "You guys really didn't need to get me anything."

"Oh, don't be absurd. We're not doing this because we have to." Ginny led him back into the living room, "We want to." She took a handful of Floo powder and sprinkled it into Teddy's hand, "Go to Grimmauld Place. I'll follow with Lily."

Teddy blinked in surprise. The Potters rarely spent time in the London house, preferring instead their cottage in the countryside, but he followed Ginny's order and handed Lily to her before stepping into the swirling flames and falling onto the hard kitchen floor of number twelve, Grimmauld Place.

Harry extended a hand to help the younger man to his feet, and Teddy looked around as he stood. It had been years since he had last been in the former headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix – once, before he went to Hogwarts, Harry and Ginny had used the dark building for a Halloween party for Teddy and his friends. As he glanced around the spacious kitchen, Teddy could barely align this bright room with the one he remembered from his childhood. The wood of the cabinets was a light maple, and magical windows had been charmed onto the stone walls, letting in false, but bright, sunlight.

"You renovated Grimmauld Place?" He stared around him, still astonished at how different the room looked.

Harry grinned, "It's been in the works for a few years - they just finished the upstairs last week. What do you think?"

Teddy stepped away from the fireplace as a whoosh of flames indicated the arrival of Ginny and Lily, and moved toward the counter, running a hand over the light granite. "It's incredible. It looks great, Harry, really." He laughed, "Are you planning on moving in here? I never thought you'd leave Chelmsford."

"We never will," Ginny stepped forward, and Harry wrapped an arm around her waist. Lily had gone to sit next to Albus at the table, and he was glancing worriedly at the green lollipop she was tapping against the table.

"Why the renovations, then?" Teddy glanced from Harry to Ginny in confusion.

"Well, obviously," James piped up, "For you."

Teddy stopped breathing, "What?"

Harry laughed, "Oh, if you could see the look on your face." Ginny elbowed him in the side and he continued, "Yeah. We tried to think of what to get you for graduation, but we couldn't come up with anything. And then Andromeda told me that you were concerned about finding a place to live, since so many of your friends were getting flats with their girlfriends. And we're not using this place, and it's really more yours than ours, anyway. The deed is all in order, I just need you to sign some papers."

Teddy slowly sank down into a chair at the table, "You're giving me a _house_?"

"You deserve it, Ted." Ginny grinned, "Come upstairs, we'll show you around."

The Potters didn't leave until they were sure that Teddy was comfortable (enough) with the gift, and Teddy hugged Harry and Ginny, constant thanks pouring from his mouth, before they stepped back toward the fire.

"Hey, Teddy?" Lily's small hand already clutched Floo powder – he could see the way it clung to her sticky fingers.

"Hey, Lily?"

"When I'm old, and you're older…" She hesitated and Teddy blinked. He'd never known Lily to be nervous around him.

"When you're old and I'm ancient?" He prompted, and she smiled.

"I can live here, right?" Suddenly over her shyness she blurted in a rush, "In my own room with green walls with dragons painted on them and an entire case of lollipops and a balcony and…and everything?"

Teddy grinned at her, reaching out to ruffle her messy red hair, "I promise."

She sighed, "Good." And then she was gone in a rush of fire and he had a house to explore and friends to Floo and a girlfriend to owl – his life was turning out pretty damn well.

_**these are the hands you know,  
the lips you recognize, the smile you desire  
**__**and the words you wish you could say**_

Teddy grinned at the frazzled looking receptionist as he stepped out of the lift into St. Mungo's waiting room. "Have a good night, Alice."

"Not possible," the black haired witch shot him a glare over the head of an old wizard whose eyes seemed to have been somehow cursed to where his ears usually sat. "Lucky you, getting to go home."

"Not so lucky. I'm on call tonight, so I'll probably be seeing you again in about twenty minutes."

"Maybe not," she directed the man to the lift and added, "Tell your girl I said hi."

"Will do," Teddy headed to the fireplace at the opposite end of the room, muttering, "If she's there," as he tossed the green powder into the fire.

She was. She lay on the couch in their living room, an arm across her eyes and her uniform robes still on. "Honey, you're home."

"Hey, Lily," he toed his shoes off, leaving them in a heap by the fireplace, and shrugged off his white Healer robes as he crossed the room to where his house-mate had collapsed. "Rough day?"

"Oh, you know. Ris had to go and piss off Hugo, so during work, while we were supposed to be researching the potions that Dean and Dad found on those perps last month, I had to listen to Hugo complaining about her. Which is not fun usually, but especially when I have to spend my lunchtime listening to Ris complaining about _him_." She rubbed tired hands across her freckled face and then blinked up at Teddy. "How was your day?"

"Fine. The usual curses gone right and charms gone wrong. Alice says hi." He moved to the head of the couch and she lifted up slightly so he could sit down. She let her head fall back into his lap and he ran his fingers through her tangled red hair.

"Are you on call tonight?" She covered a yawn with a tattooed hand – the twisted silver snake ran along the skin between her index finger and thumb and blinked green eyes up at Teddy.

"Yeah." He twisted some red hair around his finger and watched as it spiraled back toward the mess of red on his lap, "Are you going out?"

She shook her head slowly, "No. Want to order in?"

Teddy raised an eyebrow. He was starting to worry about her; she hadn't gone out with friends in weeks, and she hadn't spent a whole night out of the house since she broke up with Maxwell Nott three months before. He hadn't wanted to say anything – after all, she could easily use the whole "pot and kettle" excuse – it had been years since he'd had a steady girlfriend, but he had always been more content to stay at home than the fiery Slytherin. So he swallowed his reservations and asked, "Is everything all right, Lil? With you, I mean, and your friends?"

"What," she laughed, "Do you want me to leave you alone tonight? Go out and go to the Leaky or the Hog's Head or something?"

"Definitely no to the Hog's Head." Teddy sighed, "You're not just staying in to keep me company, are you? Because you should be out having fun. You're young, Lil, not an old geezer like me."

Lily punched him half-heartedly in the arm, an awkward movement because of her position, "You're not an old geezer. And no, I'm not just staying in because of you, although I'm glad you're here, because otherwise my nights would be unbearably boring."

"So that brings me back to my first question. Are you sure you're okay? Are you still missing Max?"

Lily sighed, "I broke up with him, remember?"

"So? I broke up with Vic, and I still missed her for months."

Lily sat up abruptly and turned to face Teddy, "I'm over Nott, all right? I'm fine, I'm just overwhelmed and shit. And I like being home. I especially like being home with you. So do you want to order in, or were you planning on cooking?" The slight smile that curved her lips wasn't forced, but there was a definite tenseness to it that warned Teddy he'd better drop the subject.

He ignored the twist of happiness that settled in his stomach when she said that she _especially liked_ being home with him, just as he'd been trying to ignore nearly every one of his physical reactions to Lily since she had moved in with him two years earlier (or, okay, since even before that.) He stood, "We'll order in."

"Goodie!" She whirled to the cabinet by the fireplace, suddenly perfectly awake, and tugged a pile of parchment menus from the drawer. "Chinese? Or Thai?"

"Chinese," Teddy stretched, "I'm going to go take a shower."

"Sure," Lily waved a hand absently at him as he disappeared toward the hall.

When he emerged from his bathroom half an hour later, with his hair still slightly damp and wearing Muggle jeans and a maybe-too-tight jumper, he found Lily in the kitchen, holding a teriyaki beef stick in one hand and a worn looking book in the other. He was reminded sharply of her as a child, sitting in that same seat, reading a less-professional looking book (maybe _Peter Palmer and the Polyjuice Potion_) and gripping a lollipop by its stem.

But the look on her face when she glanced up from the thick book was all the new Lily, all grace, profession, cunning, and just a hint of heated sensuality in her green eyes. "I got you orange chicken. It's on the counter."

"Thanks," he grabbed the box and some chopsticks and fell into his usual seat at the table, across from Lily. He leaned down so he could read the title of the text, embossed in gold on the leather cover. "_Potions for the Pathetic_? What're you reading that for?"

Lily rolled her eyes, "Hugo suggested it might give us some insight into the potions Dad's criminals were using. But so far I'm just finding a whole load of rubbish. Like this one: 'How to make your enemy fall in love with you'," she read, "I mean, honestly? Who would even _want_ their enemy to love them?"

"The pathetic?" Teddy suggested, conjuring a glass of water and gulping it down to chase the fire from the hot pepper he had accidently swallowed.

"Evidently." Lily shut the book, pushing it toward the edge of the table, "I can't make it through that. If Hugo wants the information _he'll_ have to read it." She sighed, picking absently at her painted thumbnail. "I'm so bloody sick of him and Ris, Ted."

"What're they fighting about now?"

"Hugo not proposing." Lily rolled her eyes, "I mean, I never even thought that Ris wanted to get married, and now all of a sudden it's all 'everyone else is getting engaged, Lily' and 'I want that bloody picket fence' and 'I just want a pretty white dress, all right?'"

"But Hugo doesn't want to get married?" Teddy stared at her in surprise, "He's always seemed the settling down type."

"Yeah, it's odd. It's like he and Ris have switched personalities or something, and now they're both getting in arguments over stupid things." She shook her head, "And complaining to me about it. Honestly, I just keep wanting to tell them, at least you're able to be with who you love." Lily bit her lip as Teddy inhaled sharply; he hadn't heard her mention feelings for anyone since a few months before she and Nott split.

"What…" Teddy swallowed. Lily was staring at him fiercely, her expression a dare or a challenge or a _something_ that he didn't quite understand. "What do you mean?"

She rolled her eyes, "Merlin, Ted, sometimes you're just so bloody blind." And then she was reaching across the table and her fingers were trailing deliciously across his cheek and she was kissing him – actually _kissing _him. Her lips tasted like salt and soy sauce, and there was still a very faint taste of coffee as her talented tongue slid against his and for a moment he was surprised because he had always expected her to taste like fruit flavored sugar but then his brain shut down and he focused on the feel of her lips and the desire bursting from his heart and the way she sighed when he kissed her back, standing slightly so he could get a better angle.

He pulled away, just for a moment, just for one quick, shared breath, whispering her name in a brush of air across her familiar lips. And then those lips were back on his and he didn't want anything but her, couldn't even _think_ of anything else.

"Teddy!" Alice's voice ripped through the haze of desire and joy that had suffused his mind, "Get your arse back here. There're about a million people in the waiting room, and they're bleeding something terrible all over the place."

He pulled back, and Lily's hand slowly fell from his cheek. She looked about to speak, about to move those delicious lips and say something, but he turned without a word and hurried toward the fireplace, his hand clutching Floo powder and his body (his stupid fucking body and his bloody unbearable desires) was whirling away from the kitchen, away from his shocked Lily, away from his irreparable mistakes.

Alice hadn't been lying – there was a shitload of blood all across the floor, coming from three men who were still fighting, arguing in dreadful loud tones over the sounds of children crying and sisters hissing and seven Healers attempting to shut everyone the fuck up. Teddy was not in the mood to deal with the absolute absurdity of patients and Healers and St. Mungo's politics, so he Stunned the three arguing men and turned a _Sonorus _on himself, forcing his voice to adhere to that tone he had used when he was taking his bedside manner exams, "I'm Healer Lupin. If you can all please calm down, we will be with you shortly."

He ended the charm and swept his wand, levitating the three Stunned men and glancing at one of the other Healers standing in the waiting area, "Can you banish that blood? I'll take them up to the initial care unit."

Teddy focused on his job. This was what he was good at. He wasn't good at emotions, at stealing kisses and making himself happy. He had never been good at that. It had been safe to love Lily, safe to pine after her, because she was _too-fucking-bloody-young_ and his god-sister, besides. It had been safe to love Lily because he had been sure she would never love him back, because he was old and because she _knew _him. She knew him better than anyone else ever had, so of course she wouldn't love him. He wasn't loveable.

But now everything was bloody fucked. Because maybe she did love him – the evidence pointed toward that, anyway – and he had just left. Had snogged her senseless, had responded to her lips, her hands, her _tongue_, on his, and then had disappeared because work needed him. Like they couldn't have handled it on their own, couldn't have handled it long enough for him to tell her he'd be back, to tell her they'd talk, to let her know that it _meant something_. Because of course it did. She was Lily, so of course it meant something. It meant everything.

But he hadn't, he hadn't, and so it was all fucked up and he had to focus on his job because otherwise these three idiot men who had very possibly ruined his life might suffer from his negligence, and it's not to say that they didn't deserve it, because they probably did, but he was a Healer, so he had to at least try to fix them.

When he finally stumbled back out of the kitchen fire in Grimmauld Place, three hours had passed and he did not expect to find Lily there. He wasn't surprised to see a kitchen knife stabbed into the table, holding a scrap of parchment in place, a note that Lily had clearly scribbled in a rush: _I've gone out. I'm fine. _And then a word that was crossed through several times, but which he could still make out: _BASTARD._

And yeah, he deserved that. He deserved a hell lot more than that, actually. He deserved a face full of curses and ears full of threats and a chest bruised from Lily's little, fierce fists. But all he had was one crossed out curse word and one very _very_ pained heart.

He could wait, he thought. He could wait for her to show up in the kitchen or the living room, or if she was still upset, the private fireplace in her room upstairs. Then he could try and explain that he hadn't been thinking.

Or he could go and find her, get whatever was going to happen over with. There were three places she'd be, three people she'd want to see. He decided against James and Al. They would be nice, probably, but they'd bother her, beg her to tell them what was wrong. She had been complaining about Ris, but that didn't mean that Lily wouldn't go to her best friend. After all, the two had put up with a lot of shit from each other over the years, and they knew each other well enough to value silence. Actually, he realized as he quickly changed out of his blood-splattered clothes, the fact that Lily had been upset with Ris earlier meant that she wouldn't think Teddy'd expect her to go there, which meant she probably _would_ go there. Because that's how Slytherins thought.

He apparated to Ris's flat, rather than risking the Floo network and the possibility that she'd have blocked him from entering. Teddy appeared in the hallway and tapped quickly at Ris's front door with a shaking hand.

"Teddy?" Ris opened the door after a moment or two that felt like decades to him, opened it only enough for him to see her pretty face and curly dark hair. "What're you doing here?"

"Can I see Lily?" Pretences be damned.

She raised one dark eyebrow, "What makes you think she's here?"

"She always comes here." Teddy shifted uneasily, "Also, you're not inviting me inside. I may not be your favorite person, Ris, but you have always been bloody polite to me."

"For all you know, I could have Hugo naked on the couch. I wouldn't want to subject you to that embarrassment."

"Bullshit. You would, because you like making people uncomfortable, and you and Hugo are fighting. So I doubt he's even here, let alone naked."

Ris shook her head. "You'll never beat a Gryffindor for bluntness," she muttered to herself, then drew in a sharp breath. "Fine, what do you want?"

"I want to see Lily," Teddy repeated slowly.

Ris stepped aside, and Teddy entered her flat. "What for? She's pissed at you, you know. I don't know why, but she came in looking about ready to curse your bollocks off, hissing about what a bastard you are. So I don't think she particularly wants to see _you_."

"She doesn't," Teddy admitted, "But I _need_ to see her."

Ris stared at him for a moment, her dark eyes scanning his earnest face and sliding down his body, resting for a brief second on his still-shaking hands before returning to his face. "Lily's my best friend."

Teddy nodded slowly. He would put up with whatever sappy nonsense the girl spat off if it meant that he got to see his – if it meant that he got to see Lily.

He was surprised by what she said next, "But if you want my opinion she's acting an absolute bloody idiot. I mean, honestly, she's been quiet and withdrawn for ages now. She should have just gone for it. So if you can bring her out of this funk, well, I might decide that I like you. If you can't…" she grinned slowly, and Teddy could read the threat in the curve of her red lips. "She's in the guest bedroom. It's the second door on the left."

He nodded his thanks and moved down the hall. He could have knocked – maybe he should have – but he didn't. He tapped his wand against the doorknob and muttered a few unlocking charms, knowing that Lily would have locked the door with more than one. It swung open on a dark room – from the moonlight that fell through the window he could just barely make out the shape of Lily's body sprawled across the bed. He closed and locked the door silently behind him, and then, not thinking, moved across the room, sitting down at the foot of the bed and wondering whether he should start talking, or if he should just let her curse him first.

But she didn't say anything, didn't move, and certainly didn't draw her wand on him. He closed his eyes and listened to her deep breathing, wondering if she was really asleep, or if she was just faking it, faking it so he'd leave her alone. Because Teddy had always been considerate.

But not tonight. Tonight he needed her, and tonight he was going to give in to all the emotions that had been whirling around his mind since she turned sixteen. He moved slowly, lying down beside her on the bed, with his head on the second pillow and his eyes staring unseeing at the dark ceiling. He didn't touch her, at first, but then his hand sought hers, fumbling a bit in the darkness. Then he felt the softness of her palm and the heat of her tattoo and he very slowly linked their fingers together, praying that she wouldn't pull away from him.

She didn't, but she didn't exactly respond, either. She stayed still as he smoothed his thumb across the back of her hand, and didn't say anything when he lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a gentle kiss against it. "I'm sorry," he murmured.

"For what," her voice was barely a breath, barely a whisper, but he caught the anger in it. And the pain.

"For leaving."

"Not for kissing me?" She sounded surprised.

"How could I be sorry for that?" He slowly sat up, waving his wand to light the lamp on the bedside table, and released her hand, reaching instead to brush some hair from her damp cheeks. She sat up too, turning to face him and meeting his nervous gaze with her own. "I've wanted to kiss you for…oh, at least three years. How could I be sorry for finally doing it?"

She blinked in surprise. "Three years?" She repeated.

He nodded. "You're not sorry about the kiss, are you?"

She shook her head. "If you wanted to, though, if you'd wanted to for so long, why'd you run off so quickly when Alice Flooed?"

"I was scared of what it meant."

"It meant something?"

He smiled slowly and leaned across the inches of space between them, unable to stop himself. Just before he pressed his lips to hers he said, "If you want it to."

She pulled away from the kiss after a moment, her voice steady as she whispered, "I want it to mean everything."

Teddy couldn't stop the smile that spread across his face at that, and Lily returned it nervously as he promised, "Then it does."

She closed the space between them then, her arms around his neck and her lips across his and he thought that he tasted blue raspberry for a moment before he stopped thinking about anything other than her.

The next morning, when he took out the garbage (because Ris said that if he was going to spend the night _and_ make her so bloody frustrated that she needed to reconcile with Hugo, the least he could do was help clean up around the flat), he saw a white stick at the bottom of the bin. He smiled when he noticed the blue color dyeing the top and the crumpled bright indigo wrapper.

Blue raspberry, indeed.

**a/n:** So I've been getting favorites without reviews lately, and while I like knowing that you all like my writing enough to fave my stories, and I'm grateful for all the faves, I like reviews even more, because they tell me what you did and didn't like about the story. So if you could take a few seconds to review, that'd be totally awesome.


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